COVID-19 survivors’s tales | Age no bar in Latur couple’s triumph over COVID-19

The recovery of 105-year-old Dhenu Chavan and his 95-year-old wife Motabai has become a ray of hope in ravaged Marathwada.

The third week of March proved to be Suresh Chavan’s summer of disquiet: five members of his family including his wife and two children had tested positive for COVID-19. But he was especially disconcerted when his centenarian father Dhenu Chavan and his nonagenarian mother, Motabai contracted the virus and were suffering from high fever. As the lethal second wave of the pandemic began engulfing rural Maharashtra, many in the village of Katgaon Krishna Tanda (around 18 km from Latur city) feared the end was near for their beloved and venerated residents — 105-year-old Dhenu and 95-year-old Motabai. “Several villagers advised me against taking them to a hospital. They kept saying no one returned once they went inside one… My 75-year-old elder brother was especially anxious. He was disturbed about not being able to perform our parents’ last rites in the event of their passing away in the hospital… ‘What if the authorities did not give the bodies back?’ he kept saying,” recalls Mr. Chavan,51, the youngest of eight siblings.